Employees and Workers are Humans

November 12, 2016 by Kin

A recent commentary in a BusinessWeek talks of a “No Cost Way to Motivate”. In a few words, the suggestion is that if managers start taking an interest in the employees’ personal life (a.k.a. treating them as humans?), they will therefore work harder and with more enthusiasm.

Oh my my, really? We are supposed to treat each other as humans? I did not know that. (Though, if they do it pretentiously, it would mean worse than not doing it… almost insulting.)

To have someone writes such topic in a magazine can only mean that we have failed miserably at it.

It is not difficult for any of us to find examples in our real life. It is not too far fetched to say… most of us at work, treat each other as workers. Personally, I find such difficulty for people to step outside of this framework. We ARE engineers and we work with engineers. Managers see each other as managers, and minions as engineers, etc. When the high level executives look at “us”, we become numbers and headcounts.

Maybe solely for work purpose, it is suffice for us to acknowledge and call each other by our employee serial number. Alright, that’s probably too cynical.

The things I said above, most of us are complying to it. That is why we are such nervous wreck when we need to talk to people “in position”, or people “of seniority”. Note, fear and nervousness is not respect.

A very specific example is a friend who briefly mentioned his recent engagement to manager who took no interest, and not even a second to congratulate. I am not saying we need to have a celebration at work, but no acknowledgement? No wonder we are all miserable workers.

This takes me back to the topic that to truly relate to each others, for us humans to connect, it is a good idea to begin with the basis that we are human beings. We are all connected and that is where compassion arises. With compassion, we are giving each other a hand.

So for both productivity and for our own sake, do we really need to be “more employee” or “more human”?